2001 to 2012
After September 11
Warrantless surveillance and the Patriot Act, the Iraq war, Kelo, and the 2008 bailouts.
Key facts
- The president authorized warrantless collection on Americans on October 4, 2001, three weeks before the Patriot Act was signed.
- The Iraq Survey Group found no weapons of mass destruction. The Senate Intelligence Committee said the case for war was not supported by the intelligence.
- On October 13, 2008, nine bank executives were given $125 billion at one meeting, with no conditions on mortgages or pay.
Timeline
7 events in Police, Courts & Prisons, oldest first
- 2003August 22, 2003Police, Courts & Prisons
Texas pardons 35 people convicted in Tulia on one undercover officer's word
No drugs, weapons, or cash were seized in any of the arrests.
- 2004February 17, 2004Police, Courts & Prisons
Texas executes Cameron Todd Willingham for an arson later shown to be no arson
He said he was an innocent man, convicted of a crime he did not commit.
- October 6, 2004Police, Courts & Prisons
Texas frees Ernest Willis from death row the same year it executes Willingham
The same fire science; the prosecutor said he simply did not do the crime.
- 2009September 30, 2009Police, Courts & Prisons
Two days before it can hear the report, Texas replaces three members of the forensic panel
The Innocence Project called it the Saturday night massacre.
- 2011January 21, 2011Police, Courts & Prisons
Chicago police commander Jon Burge sentenced for lying about torturing suspects
More than 100 Black men said he or his officers tortured them.
- 2012March 21, 2012Police, Courts & Prisons
Supreme Court: plea bargaining is not some adjunct to the criminal justice system, it is the criminal justice system
97 percent of federal convictions and 94 percent of state convictions are guilty pleas.
- May 15, 2012Police, Courts & Prisons
Columbia Law School reconstructs the DeLuna case and concludes Texas executed an innocent man
One uncertain eyewitness, no physical evidence, the scene washed away.
Stories (3)
- 1991 to 2014The 2004 Execution of Cameron Todd Willingham in Texas on Junk Arson ScienceCameron Todd Willingham was executed by Texas on February 17, 2004 for setting the 1991 fire that killed his three young daughters. The case for arson was a list of "indicators" that two fire investigators read off the burned house, and a jailhouse informant who said Willingham confessed. Before the execution, a fire scientist told the state the arson findings had no scientific basis, and the state executed him anyway. A later report commissioned by the Texas Forensic Science Commission found the original investigation was "hardly consistent with a scientific mind-set and is more characteristic of mystics or psychics." Two days before the commission was to hear that report in 2009, the governor replaced three of its members and the hearing was canceled. The informant later recanted. The same year Willingham was executed, another Texas man was freed from death row after the same kind of fire science was discredited. No court or governor has ever cleared Willingham.Police, Courts & Prisons
- 1972 to 2022Mass Exonerations After Police Framing Scandals in Chicago, Los Angeles, Baltimore, and Tulia, TexasOfficial misconduct is the second most common thread in wrongful convictions, present in about 61 percent of them and higher in murder cases. Sometimes it is one officer or one unit, and when the pattern is finally exposed the convictions fall in bunches. In Chicago, a police commander named Jon Burge oversaw the torture of more than 100 Black men to get confessions; he was fired, later convicted in federal court of lying about it, and the city paid reparations. A Chicago sergeant, Ronald Watts, ran an extortion ring and planted drugs on people who would not pay, and 188 of them have had their convictions thrown out. The Los Angeles Police Department's Rampart scandal produced about 170 exonerations. A Baltimore police unit was convicted of robbing residents and planting evidence, and nearly 800 cases were dropped. In Tulia, Texas, one undercover officer's word put dozens of people in prison until the governor pardoned them.Police, Courts & Prisons
- 1963 to 2026The Trial Penalty: How Threatening Longer Sentences Forces 98% of Federal Defendants to Plead GuiltyThe Constitution promises a trial by jury, and almost no one gets one. In 2025, 97.7 percent of people convicted in federal court pleaded guilty; in state courts the figure is about 94 percent. The Supreme Court has said plainly that plea bargaining "is not some adjunct to the criminal justice system; it is the criminal justice system." It works because the government can make the price of a trial ruinous: in the case that made this legal, a man was offered five years for a forged check worth $88.30 and, when he turned it down, was sentenced to life. Defense lawyers found that people who go to trial can receive sentences three to eight times longer than those who plead. Innocent people sign too. About one in seven people later proved innocent had pleaded guilty, and most defendants held in jail before trial cannot make bail, which is its own pressure to take the deal and go home.Police, Courts & Prisons